I saw this carving on a building. I’ve seen it quite often, and from a distance it looked like a pair of mermaids. The women had fish tails. When I took a picture of it (shown above) I could see more detail. It no longer appears to be mermaids. Instead it looks like…I don’t know what. They have wings for arms, and mermaids don’t have wings. But harpies or sirens have wings. Could they be sirens? They appear to be emerging from flowers and are surrounded by foliage. Could they be flower fairies? Fairies have wings, but insect wings and not feathers. Angels have feathered wings. Well, they don’t look like angels to me.

Anybody have a guess as to what creature from mythology or folklore these are supposed to be?

I visited some acquaintances recently where I spoke of what I imagined was a watery apport. I was sitting on a couch watching TV, when a sprinkle of water fell on my arm and the armrest. There were water spots visible on the armrest. I was startled. It was a rainless day and I was indoors. There was nothing visible on the ceiling, no sign of water. Where did this come from?

Normally we’d just ignore such an event as something curious and forget about it. When I spoke of this, one of my acquaintances said the same thing happened to him long ago. When he was in the military as a young man, he was sitting outside with of his colleagues. He recalled he was equally startled when he got a small shower of water on his shoulder. He looked around thinking someone was playing a joke on him, but that was not the situation. Nobody was behind him or to his side.

It was a sunny day away from any trees. One could assume a bird dropped some poop on him, but it was not bird poop. It was water. It was an event that he readily recalled decades later. It was as inexplicable to him as what I experienced.

This got me to thinking, are watery apports more common then anyone realizes but nobody talks about them? There are tales of apports of all types falling from the skies but I’ve not heard of a personal “rain” apport. I’m thinking there are many paranormal events that are shared by individuals but aren’t discussed or recognized. We live in a strange world.

I was visiting with some friends and I mentioned my previous post about a spontaneous shower of water on my hand from nowhere. A watery apport. I asked for some suggestions for an explanation. None were offered, but it inspired Nick to offer his own ghost story.

Very long ago Nick lived in Boston, obviously a very old place. He said in his younger days he liked to take walks about Boston’s old streets often for an hour. On one night empty of anyone else, he spotted a strange gentlemen walking down towards him.

This individual wore a strange outfit. He had a top hat on is head, and a dark outer garment. Nick said he recalled the guy had a tight white collar around his high collared neck. And he carried a cane, which he heard going “click, click” as the stick struck the sidewalk. He was approaching Nick, with the light of a streetlight on him.

Nick thought the guy was going to a costume party. He was going to greet the man when he walked by and praise his outfit. But then the man turned, and passed behind the light pole. As he passed behind it, nobody emerged from the other side. The Top Hat Ghost vanished.

I had a strange day, strange almost beyond reason. I was at my father’s home. I’ve been helping out my dad since my brother’s death. We needed to print letters from our lawyer and copies of his death certificate. We printed a copy of the lawyer’s letter. How about scanning copies of the death certificate? His printer does not have a scanner. He had one, but my brother used it and we couldn’t find it.

My dad exclaimed, “Damn Michael, he must have thrown it away.”

The next day we found the scanner tucked away in a cabinet. However, when we tried to print more pages, after his exclamation, the printer failed to work. It grinded away, something was mechanically wrong with it. After repeated attempts, looking for paper jams and such, there were appeared nothing wrong with it. It just spontaneously failed to work. We joked that my deceased brother was responsible for the printer’s failure.

Don’t speak ill of the dead.

I was going to go out and buy a proper printer/scanner for my dad, when I recalled I had a spare stored in his basement that I had nearly forgotten about. Dad now had a new printer/scanner and we were able to finish our task. We remarked that my brother did us a favor by stopping this old printer so now we could use this new one I had squirreled away. Really, don’t accuse the dead for our own mishaps.

Later that evening my dad went to sleep early. He is 80 years old, which I call old by even dog years. I stayed for a while watching his TV. My arm was on his sofa’s armrest. Suddenly there was a sprinkle of water on my arm as if someone had used a squirt gun on it. I was startled. There was spray of water spots on the sofa’s arm as well. I looked up at the ceiling to see where this spray came from.

The ceiling was dry. There were no water stains on the ceiling, no dripping. This evening was a cloudless night without rain. Where the hell did this spray of water come from? I thought it was an apport. An apport is the physical transference of something from out of nowhere. As I looked around for a source, and seeing none, I simply sat back down,

Then I noticed something else. We were going to throw away an old TV at the local electronic recycle place. On top of this TV was a couple of old 30-years-old Christmas ornaments that my dad wanted to throw away too, a Santa and his wife. He wanted to discard them for some reason.

As far as I can recall, these Christmas ornaments were facing the door. When I noticed them again, they were facing his TV. Directly. Each just slightly different but aimed at his TV. Haunted Christmas ornaments! My dad is not joker and couldn’t imagine doing anything like this. Did they move by themselves? Could they represent my recently deceased brother and mother?

I might be reading too much into these events. The printer failing could simply be coincidence. The Christmas ornaments might have faced the TV all along by happenstance and I’d not paid attention. But the drops of water, the small shower on my arm and the sofa’s arm, that was undeniable and I can’t even imagine an explanation for that.

Don’t speak ill of the dead and that is my take away from these events.

After my brother passed away we went thru his stuff, throwing away or donating most things but keeping a few mementos. It is curious what you’ll find going over someone’s belongings. You may even learn a few things you hadn’t known about them.

We came across a photo album my brother possessed which we’d never seen before. It was filled with mostly Polaroid pictures he had taken over the decades. My brother was fond of instant cameras and used those instead of film cameras. Today we have digital so these were all old pictures taken over the decades, the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.

Going over his private pictures one photo caught my attention. It was of a wooded area and the sky. A scan of this photo is at the top of my blog. It seems typical except for something in the sky. I was taken aback when I first saw it. What the heck was that? There is a strange shape in the sky. And oddest of all, it had a light emanating from this object. If it weren’t for that glow I’d likely not pay attention to it.

Could it be an airplane? It doesn’t appear like one. Is it a photo of UFO? My brother kept a picture of something strange in his private photo album for a reason. I wish I had seen this photo while he was still alive. I would have asked him about it. How old is the photo? Decades? When and where did he take it? Did he see anything at the time? Did he realize he caught something in the sky on film?

If my deceased brother had a UFO sighting and he photographed it, we’ll never know what happened. He kept a lot to himself as I discovered when we found his private photo album. It’ll just remain a family mystery.

I was at a local forest preserve recently when I noticed some chalk marks in the parking lot (shown above). I didn’t give it much attention at first. Then I examined it more closely as they seemed curious. They did not appear to be gang symbols (I could be mistaken). They looked like only scribbles and doodles.

What caught my notice was the pentagram on the left side. At the curb it was written “4 KRYSTEK”. That could be someone’s name. Beneath the pentagram was what appears to be a heavily chalked six-pedal flower. To the right of the pentagram was a strange shape…another flower? Or a 4-winged bug? Finally there was a chalk mark I couldn’t make out which resembled a long necked bottle.

Does anyone understand if these chalk marks have any occult significance? Since there was a pentagram in the mix, it occurred to me this might actually be part of a larger pentagram. Connect the centers of the different chalk marks and you do get a pentagram (pictured below).

As for the name KRYSTEK, what if we remove the EK from the end of the name:

KRYST

CHRIST

Could 4 KRYST be a phonetic version of “For Christ”?

These chalk marks could represent the markings of ceremonial magic. It could be a magic circle, but disguised. Ritual magic often uses the names of God to power their rituals. At the top of the hidden pentagram/circle is hidden the name of God, empowered by the other symbols that make up the points of the pentagram. It appears someone just might have been practicing some occult ritual in this forest preserve, possibly under the cover of night.

Do these chalk marks have occult significance or are they just doodles? Could they represent the four elements? The answer depends on if these are doodles or symbols.

When someone dies there is the potential for paranormal events to occur. When my brother passed away recently I wondered if I’d experience anything. I have not. However, my father did.

On the day my brother was slowly dying he was on morphine and unconscious. I was at his side in the hospital while my father was at his home. My dad is old but his mind is still sharp. However he doesn’t have much stamina so it was my task to stay with my brother.

My father sat in his living room watching television. At this spot he had a view of the hallway from the kitchen to the bedrooms, one of which my brother has been using during his illness. He then saw my brother pass by in that hallway. At the time my brother was barely alive in the hospital.

It happened swiftly but he saw what he saw. Perhaps my brother had an out-of-body experience while he was still alive and checked out his room. And somehow my father was able to actually see him, if only briefly.

People having out-of-body experiences while near death are a commonly reported experience. What was unusual was that my dad had a visual sighting. If so, then perhaps my brother saw me in his hospital room as well. That is a comforting thought for what had been a very grim experience.

I’ve been spending time, even sleeping over with my father at his house as we do the cleanup and take care of the business of dealing the passing. I slept over for an entire week and I saw or felt nothing unusual. I am confident my brother is not a ghost, but has passed on to that which lies beyond. He is now with our deceased mother.

My brother died of cancer. His kidney cancer spread to his lungs. Then it was discovered he had five tumors in his brain the size of marbles. Finally he was brought into the hospital’s emergency room. They drained fluid from his lungs and it seemed he might be on the mend, to any extent that could be possible. Then he turned for the worse and had difficulty breathing.

I stood there and watched as he slowly suffocated. I thought I’d be able to witness this, but I didn’t realize how disturbing this would be. Now I can’t sleep at night.

I’d like to imagine his spirit will visit me sometime, but I doubt it. He tolerated my hobby blogging about the esoteric and the paranormal, but he actually thought it was silly. I will look for any signs he might have decided to hang around the material world long enough to make some form of contact. However, with my deceased mother beckoning him into the tunnel of light, I doubt he’d want to hang around to visit. If I do discover anything I’ll certainly write about it.

There was an old man who lived in Bulgaria. I was told the following story by a relative of this individual. This old man was over a hundred years old. He lived in a small village in the mountains and was favored with a very long life. I was told he enjoyed making walnut oil from walnut trees grown on his property. He lived by himself as his wife had died a while ago and he outlived all his friends. Only his younger sister was still alive. That family was blessed with a long life.

Yet long life may not be such the treasure it seems. All his friends from his past were gone. He had other relatives, but they were off elsewhere living their own lives. He made his walnut oil but even that lost its appeal.

One day he visited his sister, and told her he was tired of life. He had gone on too long and everyone he knew was gone. He told his sister he decided to die. He had enough of life. It was his time to go. He departed for his home.

The next day he died peacefully in his bed.

When I was told his story I thought it was terribly sad. Could someone really become so weary of life he would choose to pass away? But then we haven’t lived in is shoes. Imagine everybody you knew was gone and you were all alone. At his age what is the point of life if not to be with friends and relatives?

How did this hundred-year-old man will himself to die? I have no idea except maybe he just gave up. His will to live was gone. He may have gone to sleep and chose not to awaken. This suggests we have the will to live or die and it is as much mental as physical. I wish this old man well with his wife and friends in the afterlife.

I thought of the tarot card called the Hermit. It shows an old man with a lantern looking into the past. The face of the hermit is facing left, which represents the past. Looking to the right symbolizes the future (just as we read text from left to right). If we only look into the past, then life is pretty much over. I know old people whose glory days were in the past, and ignore the present let alone the future. We all know old people similar to this who reminisce about the old days and never a thing about the future.

Just because we are old doesn’t mean we don’t have a future, even if it will be brief. I also know old people who don’t live in the past. They are engaged in the present. I rarely hear these oldsters reminisce but instead chat about current events and what is happening now. These older people are fun to talk with and offer a lot of wisdom from a lifetime of experience. As we grow old, we need to retain our curiosity and be engaged with the world. Old is a state of mind. That is my interpertation of the Hermit tarot card.

Do animals have souls? This is not a scientific question, as science denies human beings have souls. Yet for those who believe mankind have souls, many pet owners may wonder if their pets can exist outside of physical death. With so many animals in the wild that live, reproduce and perish quickly, can they possess individuality let along anything like an immortal soul?

Pet owners may recognize what they think of as individuality and even a soul in their pets. Science calls this anthropomorphism: attributing human characteristics to non-humans. However I’ve seen information that shows animals are not the dumb, mindless brutes science has assumed. Especially in the more intelligent animals we’ve seen signs of intelligence and emotion not recognized before. Animals may not have exactly human emotions, but it appears they do have emotions and perhaps even self-awareness. Ask any pet owner and they knew that all along.

There was a PBS Nature documentary “A Murder of Crows”http://video.pbs.org/video/1621910826/ about how crows can recognize human faces and recall if those faces were a threat. For humans that have crossed crows, they would communicate to their flock that these faces were dangerous. Later when crows spotted one of these “bad men” they would squawk to warn others of their dangerousness. We are now realizing the humble crow is among the smartest of animals.

My father had a pet parakeet that he owned for 7 years. He would take care of this little bird, play with it, and set up places where it could roam out of its cage. He’d often bring it to the dinner table and it would pace around checking out what was on our dinner plates and then take a bite of our meals.

As the bird got old, it fell ill. It could barely hang on to its perch in the cage. My dad took the bird from the cage and held it in his hands. He said the bird looked up at him, and then died in his hand. This struck him. My father is a hard-bitten, unsentimental type, but when he recalled this story for me he started to cry. That was the only time in my life I’ve seen my dad cry. My dad has a framed photo of the bird in his living room (shown above) along with his photos of other family members alive and gone.

Years later after his bird had died, as we talked about various things, dad mentioned a dream he had.

“Dave, guess what? I dreamed about my parakeet Budgie a few nights ago. Of all the crazy things. Budgie was flying. Remember when he got too fat to fly so I set up ladders so he could walk around to the couch and table on his own. Well, in my dream Budgie was flying just like when we first got him. He flew up on my shoulder and talked in my ear. He was just chattering away. It was like he visited me from animal heaven.”

My dad’s vivid dream of his pet revealed his pet at the bird’s healthiest. That got me to thinking. There are instances when it appears our deceased loved ones visit us in our dreams, and they are seen at their very best as well. These dreams often are so real, so uncanny they are unlike normal dreams and it is easy to believe the dead are visiting us in our slumber. Was it possible the spirit, the soul, of his pet bird visited him in his dream as well?

Do animals have souls? There is some evidence this is the case. In near-death experiences people who entered the “tunnel of light” recount how they met their dead relatives and cherished friends at the other side. There are also stories of being greeted by their dead pets as well. A beloved dead pet dog may emerge along with his loved ones at the end of the tunnel. This suggests animals have a soul.

What does religion have to say about this? Let us consider a couple of verses from the New Testament concerning sparrows.

Luke 12:6, “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God.”

Matthew 10:29, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.”

These verses suggest that the Creator of the universe will not forget a single sparrow. If the memory of the Creator is eternal, then so is the essence of his memory. What is the nature of an animal’s soul? Do they have an animal heaven? We don’t know. But I think we can take comfort in believing that even the most humble pet, like a parakeet, endures beyond this physical world.